Carbon is not only the foundation of all life on our planet, but also an element that persists in detrital material long after living organisms die. Quantifying the relative amount of living and nonliving carbon in suspended particles in the ocean is challenging and rarely done; yet it is key to understanding the fate of organic matter and informing food web models. Here, we use particulate adenosine-5′-triphosphate (ATP) and particulate carbon (PC) data collected as a component of the Hawaii Ocean Time-series program to show that living particles comprise only ~ 26–42% of the total PC pool in the surface waters of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, regardless of time of year. Diel-resolving particulate beam attenuation data are then used in conjunction with PC and ATP data to constrain living particle net growth rates for this system, yielding rates of ~ 0.5–0.7 d⁻¹ year-round. These estimates are realistic and consistent with previous microscopy and incubation-based work in the region.

中文翻译：

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在 ALOHA 站使用光束衰减和 5'-三磷酸腺苷限制生长速率和活体与非活体颗粒碳的比率

碳不仅是我们星球上所有生命的基础，而且还是一种在生物体死亡后很长一段时间内仍然存在于碎屑中的元素。量化海洋中悬浮颗粒中活碳和非活碳的相对数量具有挑战性，而且很少有人这样做。然而，它是了解有机物质的命运和为食物网模型提供信息的关键。在这里，我们使用作为夏威夷海洋时间序列计划的一个组成部分收集的颗粒状 5'-三磷酸腺苷 (ATP) 和颗粒状碳 (PC) 数据来表明活颗粒仅占总 PC 池的约 26-42%在北太平洋亚热带环流的地表水中，无论一年中的什么时候。然后将 Diel 分辨粒子束衰减数据与 PC 和 ATP 数据结合使用，以限制该系统的活粒子净增长率，⁻¹全年。这些估计是现实的，并且与该地区以前的显微镜和基于孵化的工作一致。